Descartes - Lecture 4
4. The Cogito
I think, therefore I am – possibly the most famous philosophical pronouncement ever. Parodied even by advertising companies and comedians. Ironically Descartes never uses this phrase in the main body of the Meditations. Found elsewhere (as ‘je pense, donce je suis’ in the Discourse, and a few years later as ‘cogito ergo sum’ in the Principles and the Latin version of the Discourse). However it does turn up in the Second set of Replies AT 7 140. And the 2nd Meditation does include a passage where Descartes claims that the proposition ‘I am, I exist’ is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by him or conceived in his mind.
In Meditation I the meditator uncovers what he takes to be reasons for calling into doubt nearly all of his previous opinions.
Worth recalling the context in which those arguments are supposed to constitute reasons for doubt. The meditator is explicitly engaged in a quest for a level of certainty that will permit the construction of a stable and enduring science. Probably also looking for a non-question begging way of resolving fundamental philosophical and religious differences. Moreover in order to get out of the habit of confidently asserting and placing his full trust in those propositions that have been exposed as not certainly true, he has undertaken the psychological project of pretending, for a while and in the specific context of this attempt to reconstruct his beliefs on a more trustworthy foundation, to treat those propositions as utterly false and imaginary.
When the meditator reviews his position at the beginning of Meditation II, he claims that the doubts of the previous meditation are so serious that he can neither put them out of his mind nor see any way of overcoming them. However he resolves to continue with his inquiries and persist in his policy of setting aside anything that admits of even the slightest doubt as though he had found it to be entirely false. Thus he pretends to himself that he has no senses and that body, extension, movement and place are all non-existent.
Is there anything that would still remain true in the circumstances that he is now envisaging?
Initially the Meditator suggests that one opinion that might still stand firm is that there is a God who puts in him the thoughts he is having. But this too he repudiates. However it then occurs to him that he, the Meditator, must at least be something. His immediate response to this is to remind himself that he is envisaging a situation in which he has no senses and no body. But what would be true of him in such a situation? Is he so bound up with a body and with senses that he cannot exist without them? When he reflects on the matter, though, he realizes that although he has temporarily embraced the view that there is no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies, such a hypothesis fails to cast any doubt on his own existence. He asserts that if he convinced himself of something, he certainly existed. Moreover the invocation in the this instance of his most wide-ranging explanation of error, the deceiver of supreme power and cunning, cannot serve to explain how he might be convinced of something and yet not exist. For the supposition that he is being controlled by such a being and led to embrace false beliefs actually entails that he exists and is convinced of something, and nothing can serve as an explanation of how one might form a false belief that p if that thing actually entails that it is true that p. Thus he concludes that while he is thinking or conceiving that he exists, he must exist.
As Cottingham points out, many of Descartes’ contemporaries, along with numerous subsequent commentators, tried construing this process of reasoning as some sort of syllogism.
Whatever is thinking exists (major)
I am thinking (minor)
Therefore I exist (conclusion)
Or
If any item has an attribute, then the subject of that attribute exists
I have the attribute of thought
I exist
(x) (F) (Fx -> (Ýy) (y = x)
Fa
therefore, (Ýy) (a = y)
However Descartes specifically denies that the process of thought that assures the Meditator of his own existence is a syllogism. See Second set of replies AT 7 140
According to Descartes the movement of thought is actually from the particular to the general: one realizes the truth of the general principle from experiencing in one’s own case that it is impossible that one should think without existing.
Also thinking in syllogistic terms leads to a concentration on the relationship between propositions, whereas one of the key issues for Descartes is the certainty attached to the premiss ‘I am thinking’.
The need to go through the process of doubt: it is the active attempt to doubt one’s own existence that brings one to a realization that one is thinking and that thinking implies existence. The stunning impact of one’s sheer inability to bring forward even the thin and metaphysical ground for doubt deployed against other propositions in Meditation I. Once one clearly and distinctly has before the mind the pair of propositions ‘I think’ and ‘I exist’, and the process of doubt helps to bring this about, one is intuitively aware that one thinks and thereby exists. An unusual example of an existential intuitive truth. Also interesting in that it is not a necessary truth.
Thr truth rule of Meditation III. ‘I am certain that I am a thinking thing. Do I not therefore also know that is required for my being certain about anything?’ Descartes seems to argue that as all he can see as a potential explanation of the cogito’s special certainty is that he clearly and distinctly perceives its truth, he can, at least provisionally, treat clear and distinct perception as a sure guide to the truth. However it might be suggested instead that this inference can be put into reverse in order to undermine our confidence in the truth of the cogito. And even Descartes subsequently seems to have some apparent doubts about the trustworthiness of this criterion.
The role of having a clear and distinct perception actually before the mind. When one is simply thinking of it obliquely, it seems susceptible to doubt. When attentively considering it, such doubt is impossible. The mental exercises of Meditation I and the beginning of Meditation II bring ‘I am’ and ‘I am thinking’ before the mind.
The self-evident intuition/immediate inference interpretation of the cogito
Main element: the identification of intuition/deduction with clear and distinct perception.
Intuition safer than deduction?
The difference between an immediate intuition that p or an immediate intuition that q follows from p and a chain of intuitions forming a deductive argument
Problems with this interpretation
Principles Pt. 1, Art 10: Descartes on knowing that it is impossible that which thinks should not exist
Problems about substances and attributes (3rd Replies AT 7 175-6)
Aware of attributes directly and we infer to substances?
Implications for the cogito
Uncertainty of clear and distinct perceptions
The non-mention of clear and distinct perception in the key Meditation II passage – the emphasis instead on self-defeating doubt. But note problems with statements about what seems to us to be the case: the truth of it seems to me that I am perceiving p is not entailed by the statement that some deceiver is deceiving me.
Markie’s interpretation of the cogito
Markie introduces a distinction between a very reasonable belief and a certain belief. Clear and distinct perception supposedly yields a very reasonable belief. When very reasonable belief is reinforced by the discovery that there is and can be no reason to doubt, this allegedly yields certainty.
Thus Markie presents the meditator as believing and clearly and distinctly perceiving that he thinks and exists. This supposedly makes those beliefs very reasonable. They are then transformed into certainties by the inapplicability of the deceiver hypothesis.
This interpretation has the advantage of giving clear and distinct perception a key role in the underpinning of the cogito without presenting clear and distinct perception as being entirely immune to doubt.
Remaining problems from Markie’s perspective
What is clear and distinct perception exactly and how does it yield its epistemic guarantees?
Knowledge of simple necessary truths (concept inclusion) seems very different from our knowledge of our mental states
Descartes’ use of I propositions to express his mental state. Why not impersonal ones ‘There is thought’, ‘Pain is occurring’. Lichtenberg
The unity of the self: I am thinking that p; I am willing that q, what makes it the case that one self is doing both? Is Descartes really entitled to ascribe to himself as one unified entity all the things specified in Meditation II. The unpacking process. Anscombe’s question: how do I know that I am not ten thinkers thinking in unison? The thin nature of ‘I’ propositions – anything that can formulate an ‘I’ prop is a suitable referent. This feature of ‘I’ propositions helps Descartes with the claim ‘I think’, but seems less relevant here.
A thinking thing – a stream of thoughts, v substance that might or might not be identical with the body. Descartes seems to slip towards holding that they are definitely not identical (Meditation II). This ambitious claim is qualified by the phrase ‘in the strict sense’ but see too the immediately following paragraph.
Descartes on the duration of the self – seems to assume that it persists
A substance as something that can survive a change in properties
How far does certainty about mental states extend? ‘I am in love’, ‘I don’t hate him’.
Objections to Markie
The category of very reasonable belief is already occupied by propositions that are not described by Descartes as being clearly and distinctly perceived
Descartes fails to include in his truth rule the requirement that an absolutely certain proposition needs to be such that its truth is entailed by the hypothesis that a deceiver is manipulating our thoughts: clear and distinct perception alone is what he extracts from the cogito.
Knowing that being deceived entails thinking is simply another instance of our awareness of a relationship of conceptual inclusion and is not significantly different from our awareness of the relationship between triangles and the sum of their interior angles.
Brief thoughts on an alternative way of understanding the cogito
Suggestion: clear and distinct perception should be thought of as guaranteeing truth in Descartes’ philosophical system. However we can sometimes fail to respond appropriately to this guarantee when we do not have a clear and distinct perception actually before the mind. We become distracted by, say, the deceiver hypothesis. One cure for this problem is to keep the propositions involved before the mind – and the process of hyperbolic doubt brings a clear and distinct perception of ‘I think’ and the immediate inference to ‘I exist’ before the mind.
 Descartes - Lecture 5 |
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